Liverpool have started the new Premier League season with renewed purpose and appear to have enjoyed an impressive transfer window that has eradicated the issues that punctured the club’s pursuit of success.
Jurgen Klopp has been an absolutely brilliant manager and the architect of newfound feats at Anfield, having restored Liverpool’s position at the forefront of domestic football, secured the league title for the first time in 30 years and reached three Champions League finals, winning one.
For all of the immense quality added to the club during this period, no signing has had greater importance to the trajectory than that of the manager, who has had to make some ruthless decisions along the way.
Loris Karius lost his place as the first-choice goalkeeper to Alisson Becker in 2018, who joined for £67m, and while Kevin Stewart’s sale was more low-key, he too is emblematic of the decisions necessary to create this remarkable winning culture.
Liverpool swooped for Stewart in 2014 when the player was aged 20, having not been offered a professional contract with Tottenham Hotspur.
The youngster was viewed as a crisp and combative centre-midfielder and quickly asserted himself as one of the club’s most promising talents before Klopp’s arrival changed everything.
Impressive with his equanimity, very much the composed head needed to keep the play ticking, Klopp was certainly a fan and offered Stewart his Premier League debut in 2015/16, starting him for six of the Reds’ final eight games of the term – praised as the “perfect role model” for younger peers by reporter James Pearce.
He would make four substitute showings during the opening phase of the following season – his last with Liverpool – but this has been the extent of his top-flight career.
He lost his place, and while he continued to feature sporadically across cup competitions that season, his fate was sealed and he was shipped on to Hull City the following summer.
In July 2017, Liverpool signed left-back Andy Robertson from Hull for an initial £8m, with Kevin Stewart heading in the opposite direction for a similar fee.
Stewart had been held in high regard by Klopp but it was becoming increasingly clear that injuries and Liverpool’s fast-rising ascendancy to prominence would mean that the one-time Spurs youngster was not going to earn regular match action at Anfield.
To think that Liverpool effectively recuperated the entirety of the fee paid to sign Robertson through the sale of Stewart, who was never really likely to cement a starting berth in a team targetting new levels of success, was incredible business.
Robertson has gone on to revel in a truly astounding career, important in winning the entire sweep of silverware under Klopp’s tutelage and now praised as the “complete player” by former Liverpool player Fabio Aurelio.
The Scotland captain is also considered the fourth most valuable full-back in the world according to Football Transfers’ valuation model and holds the Premier League record for most assists created by a defender, with 57.
It’s safe to say that the 29-year-old has enjoyed a more successful Merseyside career than Stewart would have likely forged for himself, had he remained on the club’s books.
In fact, the former Red – who was once compared to Xabi Alonso for his quality of passing – is now moored in the piteous position of unemployment, having actually spent over a year on the sidelines after enduring a detrimental spate of injuries that resulted in his contractual culmination with Blackpool.
Stewart has not been very lucky over the past few years; having joined Blackpool on an initial 18-month contract in January 2021, the midfielder completed 28 appearances before penning a new two-year contract in June 2021, though the 5-0 defeat against Peterborough one month earlier has proved to be his last professional display to date.
Seasiders writer Sean Mcginley conveyed news just months into the 2022/23 season that the former Liverpool ace had sustained an injury that would rule him out indefinitely, having not featured under Michael Appleton that term before his setback.
And given he would not feature again and is not unemployed, Stewart faces a fight to return to senior action as he currently bobs in uncharted waters.
He did manage to impress in instances for Hull, with former City player Peter Swan writing that his ‘tenacity and doggedness in the middle was crucial’ and that he deserves the ‘plaudits he’s getting now’, but Stewart was unable to sustain his performances with the kind of regularity that is requisite for success.
Indeed, the 30-year-old completed 78 matches for Hull and posted two goals and assists apiece, but was released in 2020 and subsequently picked up by Blackpool.
The fact that Stewart has only completed in excess of 20 league matches across the duration of his senior career epitomises his struggles, with the incessant inability to muster a rich vein of form and sustain it utterly stifling any tincture of quality from blooming into something worth singing about.
And it’s unfortunate too for a player who had such effusive praise while rising to the fore on Merseyside, but such is the ruthless nature of professional football.
Stewart has fallen foul to the sable side of the beautiful game, and while he can hold his head high after impressing during his maiden years and indeed playing a part for the Tigers during his stay, there is a rueful element to a career that could have been so much more.
As it is, Liverpool must be pleased with the business savvy displayed in shipping him on for a pretty exorbitant fee all things considered.
With Robertson arriving for a similar figure from the opposite direction, Liverpool can only be satisfied with the way things panned out, even if Stewart’s decline is one of great poignancy.
